Zeeland grad brings award-winning documentary to Holland

Saturday

A story of an explosion that began in the United States and ended in Japan will make its way to the big screen in Holland next week.

And it was a Zeeland High School graduate who made it happen.

"I'm kind of responsible for the whole thing," said Keith Reimink. "Producer, director, cameraman, whatever else you have to be when you’re making an indie movie."

Reimink graduated from Zeeland High School in 1997 before moving to New York, then Pittsburgh, where he now lives with his wife and child. He's been working in the film industry for years, and he came upon the story of Japanese men on a fishing boat who were deeply affected by an atomic bomb explosion in the seas near Japan. It was a testing site for atomic bombs after World War II ended. It wasn't long before he was making the film soon to be released in Holland at The Knickerbocker Theatre: "Day of the Western Sunrise."

"We just kind of found the story. Or the story found us," he said.

"Day of the Western Sunrise" is a Japanese-language, animated film that follows survivors from the Lucky Dragon No. 5, Reimink wrote in an email to The Sentinel. The Lucky Dragon, or Daigo Fukuryu Maru, was a Japanese tuna fishing boat that encountered a U.S. nuclear weapon test in 1954. The fishermen saw the blast, heard the sound concussion and then were showered with an ashy substance that came to be called 'shi no hai' — the ashes of death.

Reimink discovered the story while reading a book, and after some research, discovered the men affected were still alive and would be willing to talk. The next thing he knew, he was in Japan with an interpreter, interviewing people.

"We sat down with the fishermen, and we interviewed them," he said. "Their answers to our questions are what drives the story along."

The movie has English subtitles, and in the parts where the interviewees didn't completely tell the story, Reimink hired animators to light the way.

"The animation is a way to draw the audience in and keep them involved in a way instead of scattering their attention," Reimink said.

The documentary will be shown in Knickerbocker Theatre next week, March 11-16, during the Winter Film Series. It will be 7:30 p.m. each night. Reimink will be in attendance Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and will answer audience questions after the showings.

The documentary debuted in September of 2018 and has already won several awards. It received the 2018 Humanitarian Award from The IndieFEST Film Awards for a film "whose craft and message enlightens and inspires audiences to make a difference." It also received the Outstanding Achievement award from Docs Without Borders, Best Documentary and Best Animated Film at the Southern States Indie Fan Film Fest, and was Semi-Finalist from Kathmandu World Film Festival.

The film tells of an event that is documented, yet many don't know of it.

"You get the American side, that’s all you get," Reimink said. "All of that stuff is public knowledge. What you don’t see and you don’t get are survivor accounts. We had a very intimate portrayal of survivors. … It became in essence a foreign film made by a handful of Americans."

He said they didn't know for sure they had a film when they started interviewing people. And then they weren't sure if they would need to show the American side of the story. But he said once they saw the footage of those interviewed, they knew that was the only story they needed.

"It was nerve-wracking and also very important because that’s when we saw it could come together. ... Once that footage came back, we saw what an intimate and close-up and personal story we had," Reimink said. "We chose to have it be from the Japanese perspective. That was kind of an organic decision based on the story and based on the interviews."

Now, they're focused on distribution for the film. Reimink and his team have already gone to Japan to debut the film at a museum there. Now they're back in the U.S. One thing important to them is education — which led him to Hope College and the Knickerbocker.

Reimink said most of his immediate and extended family lives in West Michigan, so he's excited to bring his film home.

"I know I have a lot of friends and family that will be there," he said. Along with them, he hopes the whole community comes out to see it.

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